Everything, everything, about Bernard was different. He was as predictable as coffee, polite, careful to seem thoughtful but still as stubborn as a mule, which hardly bothered her. She had so many ways to get around his intransigence that it almost seemed endearing. She would see it coming, watch him put his tongue in his cheek, considering before shaking his head as though answering some higher logic. And she would back away, come at whatever it was from a different direction a day later, enjoying his acquiescence, smiling as her idea became his invention.
She knew Bernard wanted her for more than his partner at university gatherings. But it wasn’t difficult to hold him at bay. And there certainly was no shortage of interested men. There were all the veterans stopping by her desk for help. There were the young professors, shy and awkward in their pretensions, asking her for coffee or to go to some special lecture in their field.
And she was in no hurry. She liked her courses in the English Department, enjoyed moving from one class to the next, coming to grips with the literature—the authors and the different approaches her professors would take to them.
And of course there was Ty. More interesting than any man she knew. And despite his rough profession, perhaps the most tender. She would watch him watching her, see that look on his face as though he knew getting close to her might be both the best and the most painful thing he could possibly do. It perplexed her. And it drew her to him.
In the summer Ty got another letter from Cody Jo, this one from Italy. Then some cards. Then another letter, describing where she’d been, the hikes she’d taken. And always there was something that sent his blood rushing, made it hard for him to swallow.
“I watched a sunset with you last night,” she wrote in a card. “ Yo u were inside me.” In another: “Morning coffee. My moment with you. I taste you. Feel your warmth in the early sun.You surround me.”
One of the letters was from Switzerland. “We are hiking in these wonderful mountains,” she wrote. “You are everywhere, in the peaks and flowers. But civilization has climbed too high here. What we have is higher than civilization can go.” She crossed something out. “Is that possible? Am I too filled with you to make sense?”
But he had no way to answer. All he could do was read her words. It was easy to see his letters weren’t reaching her. She answered none of his questions.
He got a manila envelope for the letters and carried it in the bottom of his duffle, reading them over on some sunny rock after an icy bath. Or reading them before dinner, taking a drink and walking away from the others, reading them in the late sun and wondering where Cody Jo might be at that moment, what people she would be making happier, more alive.
His life fell into a pattern. He’d read a lot over the winter, pacing his trips to Missoula with the books he needed. Willie had helped him more than he deserved: suggesting books, cooking dinners, getting him to go dancing at the Elkhorn or at the big dances at the university. He liked the dancing, Willie always a little reticent at first then relaxing, dancing more and more like Cody Jo. One night after Buck got her to drink a jigger of whiskey, he closed his eyes as they danced and it seemed she was Cody Jo.
There was no more kissing. He was too immersed in his sadness. He even thought Willie might be happier without the kissing. She seemed to be content—watching him as though waiting for something.
“You keep looking at me,” Ty said to her one night between pack trips. There was a good band at the Elkhorn and Ty was glad to be in town for a night so they could go dancing. “It’s enough to make a man jumpy.” The band was playing a novelty number, a polka. They were watching Angie and Buck try to dance to it, Ty not ready for a polka.
“You can be pretty amusing,” Willie said, “with some drink and good music.”
“You like to laugh at me, don’t you?”
“I like it when you laugh.” She was part playful, part serious. “When you have a good time.”
“Maybe dancing with you is what makes for a good time.”
And then Bernard Strait was there, wanting to polka with Willie. They went out on the floor, and Ty could see right away that Bernard was good, fast—his leg coming up and banging down with each step. Ty watched them, Willie catching the rhythms perfectly but willowy and giving as she moved to Bernard’s energy. He saw that Buck was watching them too, Buck’s face red from all he was putting into it. Ty thought Buck was going to dance over and give Bernard a good bump, but Angie cut it off, heading them in another direction.
Ty was glad she did. He knew how much Bernard liked Willie, and though Bernard didn’t seem the right man for all her generosity and liveliness, Ty knew he had no business saying so. He felt lucky Willie was so good to him, uncomplaining when he would sweep down out of his mountains and rush into town for supplies, new books, conversation.
Once that spring she’d even offered to break a movie date with Bernard so she could go down to the Elkhorn with Ty.
But Ty wouldn’t have it. Something about Bernard was troubling him more and more. He didn’t want to make it worse. He’d stopped in at The Bar of Justice that night instead, not wanting to go upstairs so much as to have someone to talk with before he drove back to the pack station.
“ Yo u’re looking a little better,” Beth told him. “It ain’t been pleasant watchin’ you walk around sober as an owl.”
“Got all my gear ready for the season,” Ty answered. “Got to pack lumber to those Forest Service cabins tomorrow. Too busy to be sad.”
“But you are.” Beth patted his arm. “It ain’t hard to see. Go on and take Loretta upstairs. She’s slowin’ down on the AA. That ought to perk somethin’ up.” She poured him a drink, pleased by that one.
Loretta came over. She’d been drinking and there was a lot of color in her face. She looked as pretty as she had that first time he’d seen her.
“I give up on that AA turd. I might marry a cowboy.”
“Can one afford you?” Ty asked. “They aren’t high income.”
“Try them Forest Service boys,” Beth suggested. “Uncle Sam pays regular.” She laughed, mopped at the bar. “Those boys is still talkin’ about when it took all of them to throw Spec out.”
Ty hadn’t gone upstairs with Loretta that night, which was probably a good thing. But watching Bernard and Willie polka, he couldn’t help thinking of some of the things he had done that winter. They didn’t make him like himself very much. He’d gone upstairs with Loretta while she was still “letting go and letting God” and dealt with her as silently and roughly as though she might have given him his wound.
He’d even gotten drunk one day and gone by the cheerleader’s house. She’d made over him, given him coffee and been sweet to him. But he’d just said bad things to her. He couldn’t remember exactly what, just that he’d made her cry, that it hadn’t bothered him when she did, that he’d left not even remembering why he’d come.
And when old man Conner’s cattle got trapped by a big snow he’d pushed Smoky so hard she’d almost foundered. Her legs shaking, icicles hanging from her bit, steam rising from her as he swore at the Conner boys, pushed her so hard there was no way the others could keep up. They’d led their horses back only to see Ty bring the cattle in at dawn, save them and almost lose the best mare in the valley. Ty saw it too, but said nothing, just looked at them in their silence, spitting and rubbing Smoky down in the shelter of their barn, his hands shaking because of what he’d put her through—the madness that had driven him in the night.
The dancers had been so enthusiastic the band played a second polka. Ty watched Bernard and Willie swing back into the music, watched them dance only a little before Willie turned and came back to the table.
“Bernard has worn me out,” she said. Bernard stood there, still breathing hard from the polka, unhappy the dancing was over.
Ty saw it, asked him to sit, offered him a beer. Bernard did, talking politely even after Buck returned to the table, Buck looking a little sour because Bernard was there. But it wasn�
��t long before Willie and Angie had Buck laughing, their talk so animated it even made Bernard smile.
Things stayed a little edgy until Bernard left, and Ty knew it wasn’t all Buck’s fault. Bernard always had trouble when the Forest Service listened to the packers; he had even more when Ty was the packer. And it wasn’t lost on him how much trouble Bernard had when he saw Ty having fun with Willie. He just didn’t like to think about it. It was too complicated.
By the time Bernard left the evening was almost over. The band played a last set: “Satin Doll” and “S’posin’” and “That Old Black Magic.” Willie had had some sips of Buck’s whiskey while she and Angie were fooling around, and as far as Ty could tell it made her dancing better than ever. The band finished with “Stars Fell on Alabama,” and it was as though he were dancing with Cody Jo. Only this time he knew it was Willie in his arms.
When they got back to Willie’s, he got out of his truck and walked her to the porch. “I’m sorry about this past winter,” he said. “I haven’t been much of a friend.”
She watched, her eyes deep in the faint light from the porch.
“Things pass,” she said. “If you give them time.”
“ Yo u’ve helped with that.You and the music.”
“Your mountains helped with that.” She lifted her hand, touched his cheek. “Your mountains and their music.”
Ty didn’t get out to the pack station until almost two in the morning, and he had to get up at five to start saddling. He drank a glass of milk and went to bed in the big guest room. Angie had fixed up Cody Jo and Fenton’s room so it could take guests. This one was pretty much his by now.
He got in bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. He turned on the bedside light and got out the manila envelope, starting in to read Cody Jo’s letters again.
It wasn’t long before he was asleep, the light still on, the letters scattered across his chest.
31
1948
Looking back, Ty would find a certain symmetry about the year: marriages at the beginning and the end—no way to see either one coming. It was as though he’d stumbled onto some trail he had to follow because there was no other way. And no way to turn back.
Two letters from Cody Jo should have warned him. “We have been joined by my aunt’s colleagues,” she wrote. “One of them is Bliss Holliwell. He has written four books. Very distinguished.” She went on to say that her aunt’s friends didn’t know about packers but that she was trying to explain, and learning much about the Victorians while she tried.
The next letter was from England. “They call this the Lake Country,” she wrote. “There are mountains, but not like yours. They are open and safe, even when it rains.” She told him she was learning about people who had time and incomes and snug houses, people who wrote about each other—what they were thinking, doing for society, how they spent their days. “It’s a life packers might not understand.You are such men of action.”
It clouded Ty’s days to see the distance between them grow. Cody Jo still put time aside just for him. He knew he was with her, somehow. But he wasn’t sure how. He was sure how she was with him: along every trail he rode, in the fires he watched and the music he loved. But he knew too that it was changing—as sunrises do when winter comes.
It confused him that she’d once needed him so much and now was so sure they should be apart—though he did his best to make sense of it. Cody cared more about people than anyone he’d ever known. She was always sure of what to do, could explain it in that compelling way she had—direct, knowing just what needed to be said.
1948 251
She was certainly direct when she told him of her marriage. “I have married Bliss Holliwell,” she wrote. “But my love for you is so strong you were somehow there, wanting what’s right for me. For us.” She went on to say that she knew Bliss Holliwell was not the best man in her life, but he was the right man for her now—and in a way for Ty too. “He knows about you, Ty. He understands us. He is gentle, kind—a safe harbor for what will always be ours.”
She ended saying, “You and Fenton remain the men of my life. But Fenton is gone.You are the dangerous one. My love for you is dangerous. With my declaration to Bliss we will be safe. It makes sense of us.”
Sense was not what it made to Ty. It was as though she had torn away his insides. He got drunk the first day. And the second, the fire blazing, too lost and empty to find his bed. Then a storm came in and he had to fight it to feed the stock. That sobered him. He took to working on his saddles, making repairs in the barn—doing anything he could to keep from thinking, facing a world that seemed upside down.
It was Willie who put him back together. It wasn’t that she said anything; she just accepted it, took it in as though it were a book read and put aside until it was absorbed. You could go back to it, read the words again, but the story was told.You lived with that.
“Cody Jo has gotten married,” he’d said to her, standing at her desk in the library with some books she’d given him. It was early February, two weeks after he’d read Cody Jo’s letter. He looked a little surprised himself, still bundled against the cold in one of Fenton’s ragged old coats. He hadn’t meant to say anything at all. It just came out of him.
“Stay for dinner. I’m making a roast.”
“No time. Things to do.”
The thought of sitting over a meal and talking to Bob Ring and
Willie was too much for him. He’d talked to no one since he’d read the letter, which was why the news burst out of him so unexpectedly. A bottle so full can’t stay corked forever.
“Librarians need coffee breaks too.” Willie checked to make sure no one needed her. “Especially when a well-dressed cowboy makes an offer.”
Ty didn’t remember saying anything at all about coffee, but it was nice to walk through the cold with her to the student cafeteria.
“Why is it such a surprise?” Willie watched him over her coffee. “She loves literature. Suddenly there’s this great teacher. A worthy man to care for. She’s wonderful at that. She loved taking care of Fenton.”
“There’s others she could look after.” Ty never did know if Willie understood how he felt about Cody Jo. That day was the only time she even hinted at knowing.
“Some men don’t want to be taken care of.” She sipped her coffee. “You don’t.You like to take care of others. Up there. In your mountains.”
“I might tolerate being cared for. If she’s so good at it.”
“Maybe she tried, in her way.” Willie’s blue eyes were on him. “Maybe you wouldn’t let her. Couldn’t let her.”
Ty took the books she offered him and headed back. There was no wind, but it was deep cold. He drove with the heater on high, but the chill leaked in everywhere. When he got home, he fired up the stove and drank some milk. Then he got out a pad and a pencil and sat down at the kitchen table to write Cody Jo.
Years later Cody Jo would tell him that was the best letter he’d ever written. It didn’t seem that way to Ty, not that night. He just wrote what he had to write, wishing her his best, which he did; wanting the best for her, which he always had. He told her that he would take care of the pack station just as she wanted him to, but that he didn’t see how he could take it over from the bank. He was holding his own with them. That was enough. And then he told her that he wanted very much to see her, that he loved her still. That was the hardest part, saying it so it wasn’t wrong, didn’t ask anything of her.
The next day he drove through the snow to Murphy’s to meet the mail run. There was nothing more he could think of to say.
The rest of the winter was a blur. He replaced all the worn rigging on the pack saddles, oiled and repaired the riding saddles, putting longer tie strings on each. He took on as much leather work as he could. And when the Conner boys got sick, he took over their feeding chores, quieting the half-broken team as he did. Old man Conner had a hard time believing it.
“Them boys should stay sick longer,” he said, watching Ty
work the team through high drifts to put out the feed. “You got things goin’ so slick I forget to complain about this shitty weather.”
Ty even filled in for Gus’s brothers at the sawmill. They’d gotten into trouble in Great Falls and the judge kept them to work it off. Ty didn’t like the sawmill, but he stuck it out. He’d had a soft spot for Gus since the first day he met him.
He didn’t go to Missoula much, but when he did he’d stop and have coffee with Willie. She even got him dancing again, Ty surprised to realize he was the one who had to get relaxed—not Willie. But they had fun, Willie kidding him because he was no longer finishing the books she gave him. And when he told her Cody Jo wanted him to take over the pack station she got out a pen and asked him lots of questions, writing down the answers as though she were a bookkeeper.
“We’ll see what we shall see.” She put away her pen and stood. “But now,” she led him onto the floor, “there’s music.”
The band was playing “How High the Moon,” and with Willie so alive in his arms, it hardly seemed a chore to get relaxed.
The melt came fast that spring. Ty was in the back-country by June, supplying all the ranger stations and trail crews up and down the South Fork. Then an early fishing party came in and then another. And there were trail crews to move and Forest Service training sessions to supply and still more fishing parties. It went on like that, Ty sometimes having two or three parties in the woods at the same time—shuttling between them with his mules, moving camps, resupplying, tacking shoes back on, doctoring, keeping people comfortable.
There was so much work Ty had to keep Buck and Jasper busy all summer. Angie too. The work seemed endless, Buck getting Bump to help sometimes, Ty prying Gus loose from his sawmill when he had to.
High Country : A Novel Page 27